Satsang Q&A, August 17, 2014 (part 2)

Question:
I wonder about the following: As the energy begins to flow, I get this strange notion of needing to sort things out and needing to figure out what is peace and what is not peace. I wonder: What is the cause of conflict?
And then as we sit here I find this sort of question to be unimportant. Everything dissolves in being here.
The seeming sources of conflict just dissolve. The only thing to do is the deepening, the falling in the … (deep breath).

Reply:
Yes, in presence, all questions are answered by presence itself. Presence is sufficient.
There is a noticing of the dissolving and a noticing that whatever arises occurs in presence. Its substance is presence… the emptiness, the stillness.
The substance, the molecular structure is space.
This is the dissolution into the Source, the realization that the substance of all seeming forms is causeless emptiness; the reality of consciousness.

When you contemplate the core of substance, of manifestation, of thought, of experience, you come onto the stillness of source, which is pure presence. Presence is still, unmoved, unborn and causeless.
It is not a limited form. Not a thing.
Then, figuring things out at the mind level matters less.

You can refer to Presence, to consciousness as emptiness. But it is a full, aware, awake, intelligent emptiness, presence that calls everything unto itself, and creates everything out of itself.

You could consider that the stillness of presence, the reality of consciousness is the conceiver, creator and perceiver, as one. But it is not a process that is in time.

From that perspective, there is no conflict as there is no separation.

Question:
So tell me about struggle. What perpetuates struggle? What maintains the sense of struggle? What creates separation?

Reply:
The sense of struggle accompanies the identification with a limited form. It is rooted in the belief that I, consciousness, is a mortal body mind.
Yet, from the absolute perspective, there is really no struggle as consciousness is whole, missing nothing and seeking nothing.
From the real perspective, the perspective of the reality of consciousness, the perspective of truth, of reality, there is no division, no separation and no struggle.
It is not sufficient to have an intellectual understanding of non duality. It is much more important to realize non duality at the feeling level.

When you are on the surface of the ocean, on a raft or a sailboat, identified with a form, the going feels choppy. When you are identified as a sailor on the boat, you become concerned.

You become concerned about being thrown overboard, about the boat sinking. You fail to realize that the sailboat and the sailor are arising in your dream, in the dream of consciousness. You fail to realize that the substance of the dream, the substance of the sailor and the boat is consciousness. It is consciousness that dreams all dreams.
The dream arises as thoughts, sensations and perceptions. They are energetic vibrations throughout the unmoved, uninterrupted, seamless field of consciousness. Such arising does not separate the inseparable infinity of awareness. Awareness is seamless and borderless presence.

When you look at the night sky, you see a galaxy and it feels so gigantic from a distance, but when you view it through the Hubble space telescope, you see 20 billion galaxies. That galaxy that seemed so gigantic is not even a drop in the vastness. It is a finite vibration in the infinity of space.

So, when you refer to conflicts or contractions or struggle, you are putting your thumb in front of your face, in front of your eyes and due to the proximity of your thumb, 80% of the view is blocked. All you see is the haze of your thumb.
Your perception is blurred and unclear and thus you wonder what is going on. You say: “I cannot see clearly. I cannot perceive anything.”

That is what identification with the mortal body mind, with I-thought is like. All you can see is the haze of the thumb and you struggle for clarity.

It is like when you open the refrigerator and you see it empty because your desire is for watermelon and there is no watermelon. There are all sorts of foods in the fridge, but you perceive it as empty.

You focus on the objects that arise in the field because you have assumed yourself to be an object and believe that it is through the world, body and mind that you will find happiness and wholeness.
When you perceive yourself as a mortal body mind living in an external world of form, you lose track of your wholeness. You forget your totality.
You overlook the vastness of presence, the freedom.

And so you yearn for it. The sense of struggle thus serves you to return home. It has a hidden message: The message of causeless peace and happiness.